like mother, like son: fahrelnissa zeid and nejad devrim - part 2
words by esra
photos by istanbul modern
Nejad Devrim, born in 1st of July, 1923, in Istanbul, was also a painter just like his mother Fahrelnissa. Graduated from Istanbul Galatasaray High School, Nejad Devrim studied under Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Zeki Kocamemi, Nurullah Berk and Léopold Lévy at Istanbul Fine Arts Academy. During his training at the academy and his soul-searching for personal development, he got interested in Byzantium, Ottoman and Abstract Islamic Arts of which effect would emerge in his artistic life. He was also one of the founders of the artistic “Newcomers Group”. In 1946, he moved in Paris with a scholarship and exceled in art. So much that he was one of the young artists who were frequently invited to the infamous parties by Gertrude Stein. His first solo exhibition was held at Allard Gallery when he was 24 years old.
How did his mother react to his son's accomplishment in the European art scene? Based on the rumours, not that good. According to Nejad Devrim's wife Maria Devrim, Fahrelnissa was jealous of his son's artistic success.
He participated to the exhibitions in Salon de Mai and Salon de Réalités Nouvelles several times.
Nejad also attended to the Young Painters in the US and France exhibition curated by Leo Castellini in New York, in 1950. Afterwards, his paintings were exhibited in Galerie Charpentier every year.
Before 1950, the artist got really interested for a while and studied stained-glass parts of Chartres Cathedral and mosaics of the churches in Ravenna. This resulted him being inspired by the Italian primitives. Nejad, who had painted figurative works in his early days as an artist, moved towards the abstract during the early 1950s. in 1952, together with the famous critic Charles Estienne, he founded the Salon d’Octobre to propagate the move away from the schematic and geometric abstraction in art to more spontaneous and abstract expression. He believed that such a move would give young artists of école de Paris more freedom. However, he ended up leaving the group after their interest turned more into being against the surrealism than to geometric abstraction.
From 1960 on, his style turned into abstract expressionism and embraced a softer concept. He began to work on a lyric and abstract style using circular brush strokes, although he continued using calligraphic elements in his paintings time to time until 1980s. Around 1952, he also got married to a Polish woman called Maria Tarlowska. During their visit to Poland in 1959, he painted a series of abstract and semi-abstract paintings which were named “Polonaise”. In 1960, they travelled to Russia and then to China where he painted a series of watercolours named “Impressions of China”.
Although the first marriage ended, Nejad visited Poland again in 1969 and he met his second wife Janina. He settled down with her in Nowy Sacz. However, he continued to travel widely and get inspired by the different landscapes and places. He died in Nowy Sacz in 1995. Nejad Devrim isn’t only the biggest artist of the Turkish Contemporary Abstract Painting, but he is also one of the genuine representatives of this movement worldwide. His name is in the “Dictionary of Abstract Painting” by Michel Seuphor and his works are still exhibited around the world.
Today no one can really tell whether the rumours about his mother Fahrelnissa being jealous of his son’s artistic success is true or not. Nevertheless, they are insanely beautiful and worth to feel jealous. Maybe this rivalry caused by her mother's divorce to his father or it was a way of reconnecting between mother and son. Who knows?
Fahrelnissa's marriage to İzzet Melih Devrim lasted only five years. Their marriage was known as exemplary both in the artistic circles and the diplomatic circles throughout Turkey. She continued her education in painting at Ranson Academy in Paris and Namık İsmail Atelier of the Fine Arts University in Istanbul. She also frequently travelled through Europe with her husband. However, she is widely known as the "Princess Painter". When was this prince entering into the life of Fahrelnissa's? Thanks to these trips, her artistic vision became more widened and at the same time, something had changed. In one of the diplomatic gatherings, when she met with Prince Emir Zeid el Huseyn, Iraq's ambassador to Ankara, she was still married to İzzet Melih. Soon later, she got divorced with İzzet Melih and married to Prince Emir. Thus, the title of "princess" comes. Emir Zeyd was the brother of King Faisal of Iraq and King Abdullah of Jordan. He was also the great uncle of late King Huseyn of Jordan. Fahrelnissa and Emir Zeid had a son named Raad from this marriage.
This is how Fahrelnissa took her famous surname of Zeid and the title of Princess. She left Turkey because of the Prince Emir’s job in Iraq and, unbeknown to her, another turbulent part was about to start in her life. She met so many famous faces from Queen Elisabeth to Hitler during this part of her life. And she continued to paint throughout Europe. Her first solo exhibition was held in her own home in Istanbul, in 1944. This was followed by other solo exhibitions in Paris, London, New York and Brussels. At the time her husband Prince Emir was Iraq’s Ambassador to London and her glamorous life of dinner parties, exhibitions and travels ended with a coup in Baghdad. The King, his relatives and the prime minister were killed. Thankfully, Prince Emir and Fahrelnissa weren’t in Baghdad during the coup and their lives were spared. Nonetheless, they lost everything but their lives.
With the government gone, Prince Emir lost his job and their glamorous life in London. They began to live in a more humble lifestyle. She had to do ordinary chores around the house now. Needless to say, this was not something they thought they would experience, and naturally they struggled. As a result, Fahrelnissa Zeid cooked a meal for the first time in her life at the age of fifty-seven and stopped her painting career for a while. But her passion was so strong, when she couldn’t find a canvas, she painted turkey and chicken bones. She displayed these sculptures on motorized turntables so they could be seen from all sides. By the time it was the mid 1960s, she had begun to paint portraits. In 1969, she and her husband Prince Emir decided to leave London and move to Paris. Unfortunately, a year later, the Prince died. She couldn’t bear the loneliness and moved to Amman, Jordan where her son Raad worked.
Yes, until now, she painted amazing abstracts and portraits and made interesting sculptures, the things she accomplished during her life in Amman were much more extraordinary. If she lived in seclusion or never painted again, no one would blame her, I believe. Instead, she turned the city into an art centre, built-up a new social and artistic circle, opened an art institute named after her and continued painting portraits. Her daughter described this as the “most creative, productive and rewarding period of her life”. After her death in 1991, the government declared a national mourning in Jordan. With large crowd attending in her funeral, she was laid to rest in peace in the Royal Cemetery of Al-Raghadan Palace.
Having a special place among the artists of Turkish modern painting, Fahrelnissa Zeid’s contributions to the contemporary painting are hidden between the surprising and genuine lines in her works drawn by mystical inspirations. In her works, she combined modernism with lyricism inspired by the East. Although she is widely known with her abstract compositions in which she used flickering colours, her portrait works that she painted later in her life are as beautiful and refreshing as her abstracts. She summarized her extraordinary life with a note that she left on the back of a painting: “As my life played me a serenade, I danced around it like a gypsy.”